Attack on Camp Holloway

The Attack on Camp Holloway was a Viet Cong raid on the US base at Camp Holloway in Pleiku, South Vietnam.

26 days after the Battle of Binh Gia and just a week after President Lyndon B. Johnson's resignation, McGeorge Bundy handed Johnson a memorandum which stated that the current strategy in Vietnam was not working, that the Viet Cong was on the rise, and that the Viet Cong were being supplied and reinforced by North Vietnam. If an independent South Vietnam was to survive, Bundy believed that the US needed to act fast. Either the US could go along as it had been going (seeking to negotiate a face-saving settlement) or use still more US military power to force the North to abandon its goal of uniting the country. Bundy and Robert McNamara favored escalation, saying that the other option would lead to the South's fall; Johnson decided that nothing could be as bad as losing, and decided to escalate the war.

A week later, Viet Cong guerrillas from the Viet Cong 409th Battalion struck the American helicopter base of Pleiku in the Central Highlands, killing 8 American advisors and wounding over 100 more. Johnson immediately responded with Operation Flaming Dart, an air raid against a North Vietnamese army barracks.